Ghana: Amazing People Amazing Country

My programme concentrated on sports teaching in the town of Frankadua in the eastern region of Ghana. 20 minutes down the road was another town called Asikuma where there was an orphanage in which volunteers from a separate programme were working. After a discussion with these volunteers, along with one of the project leaders it became clear that sport, in particular football was a real passion to many of the boys here, although no real coaching was in place. During my second week I added football coaching at the orphanage to my schedule and although of a lack of equipment coupled with the football pitch being in a poor condition all the boys showed real talent and more importantly a huge passion for the game. Over a short period of time I formed a real close bond with all the players. I then came up with the idea to organise a friendly game with the junior team from frankadua who i was also coaching. When mentioning this to the boys a real energy and excitement was clear to see as these boys had never played a proper football match on a full size pitch with actual grass before. The match was arranged for a weeks time with many things having to be organised including acquiring football boots for the players who didn't have any. In total 6 pairs of football boots were bought and i will never forget how thankful the children were. On game day i had arranged a mini bus to take the boys from Asikuma to Frankadua, the atmosphere during the journey was incredible with all the boys chanting and singing songs, a moment I will never forget. When we arrived at the football pitch there was maybe 100 people there to watch the game. I could see the orphanage team were nervous and this reflected on the match result with Franakdua winning 4-0. In my opinion the score was irrelevant as this was the first ever match for the orphanage and as a football coach i knew that for a team to grow and improve they must learn that there are going to be better teams and in turn defeats. The next day I returned to the orphanage expecting the boys to still be down, however this wasn't the case with all the boys up beat, training hard and asking when the next match would be. This for me meant everything as I gave these boys an incentive to keep playing football and working hard. In Africa life is hard for children and even more so for orphaned children and to just give them something to look forward too and concentrate on was the reason i started the coaching at the orphanage in the first place and I hope future sports volunteers carry this on too.